Integrating POS Systems - Solution Overview
- Joseph Ioannou (Unlicensed)
CRM.COM Rewards application is designed to cover any business operations that aim to identify and award their loyal customers, via numerous reward offers. Such offers award loyal customers with conditional (or not) cashback that can be consumed on specific products, units (different merchant' stores), and specific days/hours or at the customer's discretion (with no conditions) without having any dedicated operations on the POS side (awards are agnostic to the POS system) CRM.COM supports two reduction methods that define how the amount that is requested to be consumed (spend) by the customer will be reduced from the total amount that should be paid Point of Sale (POS) is the system that is used by an agent (cashier) to sell goods to a customer and collect the due amount in usually a face to face (over the counter) manner The following section lists a number of definitions that describe the key points in a POS & CRM.COM Rewards integration flow The customer is identified on the POS system by providing an identification mean, such as email address, phone number or card number A customer's basket is closed when the last intended product to be purchased is submitted in the POS (i.e. cashier counter) and no other adjustments (i.e. add/remove product) will be made Award is the amount that will be provided to the customer in the form of cashback when closing a customer's basket (given that the purchased products are eligible for an award based on a valid reward offer) Spend is the awarded amount that will be deducted from the basket's total amount that the customer should pay for. The amount that a customer can spend is the total amount that the customer was awarded from previous purchases During the process of awarding a customer's purchased products, some products may do not exist in CRM.COM yet (due to a time-frame gap with the product synchorisation runs) Such products can be handled entirely by CRM.COM using a default purchased product without interrupting the POS flow, and once the related record is created in CRM.COM the merchant can retrieve the intended purchased products for further analysis The steps bellow describe a common scenario how to integrate a POS system with CRM.COM Rewards Prior closing the customer's basket, the POS agent can preview the behavior of the award and spend (automatic, instant, and additional) based on the customer's basket The following diagram illustrates the integration architecture and key points CRM.COM Product Synchronization allows a POS system to add or update a group of products that exist in the POS with the ones in CRM.COM usually through a background batch process, resulting into creating new products or update existing ones (e.g. name, description, category) in the CRM.COM Products are physical goods that can be used by any type of business transaction within CRM.COM software. Products are classified into services and physical goods. They can be sold rented or simply used by customers through multiple business events such as subscriptions, jobs, activities, direct sales and can also be awarded to reward participants through rewards In addition, Products in CRM.COM have a set of attributes (type, brand, family, categories) that are used to determine their operational characteristics, define trademarks and group products based on common physical characteristics Product Type is used to determine the operational characteristics of products, and classify a product as a physical good or a service and what kind of a good or service is (i.e. termed, usage, traceable, non-traceable). For POS integration purposes, all products should have a product type that classifies products as non-traceable physical goods Product Brand is used to define trademarks or distinctive names that serve to identify a specific Product Product Family is used to group products that derive from a common product platform and have similar physical characteristics Product Categories are used to classify products into generic groups based on specified shared attributes Putting it all together Now that we have laid out all product attributes, let's put them together and present a couple examples of Products in CRM.COM Smartphone, Android phone, Octa-core processor TV, QLED, 4K resolution Brownie, Chocolate, Diary Product Synchronization can be achieved using CRM.COM Web API methods that a POS system can call periodically in order to synchronize product information between POS and CRM.COM The following diagram illustrates the integration architecture and key pointsCRM.COM Rewards & POS Ecosystem
What is CRM.COM Rewards?
What is Point of Sale?
Important Key Definitions
Identify Customer Create Customer Basket A customer's basket is created when a set of products that is intended to be bought by the customer is presented to the POS (i.e. cashier counter) for submission Close Customer Basket Complete Payment Completing a payment is the process where the customer is prompted to pay for the purchased products via any form of payment, such as cash, credit cards, and awarded cashback Award Spend Default Purchased Product How to integrate your POS system to CRM.COM
CRM.COM & POS Product Synchronization
What is a CRM.COM Product?
Product Type
Product Brand
Product Family
Product Categories
No. Product Product Type Product Brand Product Family Product Categories 1 Galaxy Note 9 Technology Samsung Smartphones 2 Samsung MU6070 Technology Samsung QLED TV 3 Brownie Comestibles Yummy Chocolates Chocolates 4 Croissant Double Comestibles 7 Days Croissant Croissant, Chocolate, Vanilla 5 Iced Caramel Latte Coffee Coffee Brewers Coffee Coffee, Milk, Latte, Syrup How Product Synchronization between POS and CRM.COM works